Ep 16. Star City 2040

In Arrow season 7 episode 16 ‘Star City 2040’, the show takes a leap forward into the future with a story that follows Mia Smoak (Katherine McNamara) and her team in a dystopian future version of Star City. The episode opens with a young Mia discovering that her father, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), was indeed the Green Arrow. She's been led to believe that he died when she was just a baby, but a mysterious person (played by Joseph David-Jones) sets her on a journey to discover her true heritage and what really happened to her father.

The show jumps 20 years ahead and we meet a fierce, independent, skilled fighter in Mia, living in a version of Star City that has lost everything that ever mattered. We meet Mia’s team who help her fight against the influential power of Galaxy One, a huge corporation that appears to have complete control. The team consists of William Clayton (Ben Lewis), Mia’s younger half-brother and the son of Oliver and Felicity, Connor Hawke (Joseph David-Jones), who is the previously mentioned mysterious person from Mia’s earlier encounter, and Zoe Ramirez (Andrea Sixtos), who is the daughter of Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez).

The episode focuses on where everyone is in their lives, who they have become, and how they landed in this version of Star City. William, who is now in his late 20s, is an accomplished software developer and using his skills to help Mia fix a weapon that is vital to take down Galaxy One. Meanwhile, Connor has become a vigilante and works solo, while Zoe has street smarts and, like her father, runs an underground street fighting ring.

As the team works together to take down a Galaxy One research facility, they face some difficulties and one foe proves to be particularly tricky to defeat. The episode also explores Mia’s relationship with her mother Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), who appears to have vanished from the future. The episode is understandably heavy on exposition, as it fills in the gaps of what has happened in the past and sets up what is to come.

‘Star City 2040’ shows a different side to the Arrow mythology and the series as a whole, placing the show into another genre subheading of Cyberpunk style sci-fi adventure. It’s refreshing and exciting to see the Arrowverse in a new light, and this episode gives Arrow fans a glimpse of what’s possible with the show, even as it transitions to its final season. ‘Star City 2040’ gives Arrow the chance to reconceptualize their characters and the world they exist in. This episode may be the first in this new world, but it can't certainly won’t be the last, and it leaves a big opening for the series to go in new directions in the next (final) season. The camera work is supremely confident throughout, with some excellently-staged action set pieces, and the use of particular camera angles makes for some truly exciting fight sequences.

This definitely felt like one of the more interesting and exciting episodes for a long time, and it's intriguing to see Arrow play around with the format so confidently. The new dynamic of these characters and their relationships with one another feels real, grounded and more depthful. The episode ends with a major event that should change the trajectory of the show going forward. Ultimately, ‘Star City 2040’ is a bold and exciting return to the series, one that reminds us why Arrow has been such a long-lasting staple of The CW network for so many years.